World's Best-Selling Small Car: Maruti Suzuki Alto

Maruti Suzuki has been the pioneer of India's automobile industry, and the saga first started when the Maruti Suzuki 800 was launched in India. Established in 1981, MSI has currently has 15 models in its line-up. The nation's biggest carmaker churned out a couple of legends that changed the way we travelled. Now, the company, or one of its product, to be precise, has made India proud all over again.

Maruti Suzuki Alto, the best-selling car in the country for 9 long years, became the first made-in-India car to be the largest-selling small car in the world in 2014. The Alto hatchback beat cars like the Volkswagen Golf, Toyota Aqua, Honda Fit and Daihatsu Tanto to bag the honour; it sold 264,544 units in India in 2014. The other contenders managed the following sales figures:

Volkswagen Golf: 255,044 (Germany)

Daihatsu Tanto: 234,456 (Japan)

Toyota Aqua: 233,209 (Japan)

Honda Fit: 202,838 (Japan)

Volkswagen Gol, the small car that held the honours for a long time until 2014, saw a drop in its sales by about 30 per cent and was eclipsed by the Fiat Palio in Brazil last year.